CRUSADERS head coach Brian Noble said his side deserved to win as they came from behind to win 26-22 away to Catalans Dragons on Saturday.

Tries from Weller Hauraki, Jason Chan, Rhys Hanbury and Peter Lupton, all converted by Clinton Schifcofske, who also kicked a penalty, gave Crusaders victory at Stade Gilbert Brutus.

Two tries from Clint Greenshields and one from Remi Casty was the Catalans Dragons reply while Thomas Bosc booted three conversions and two penalties.

"I thought we were deserved winners," he said. "We’ve been improving over the last couple of weeks and some of our game improved where we needed to improve. We talked about performance, and coming to France at the best of times is a big ask. We’ve prepared well and we’ve practised well all week.

"I thought we won it in a tough way. Our kicking game was ordinary again and we made things difficult for ourselves with the way we controlled our ball sometimes.

"But we found enough reasons to get to the end of the field and score some points. You’ve certainly got to get to the right end of the field against this team and keep them at the right end of the field near their try line.

"That’s one of their secrets, they’ve got too much prowess - people like Maguire, Sherwin and Bosc can worry any defence. At times we lost ground but you do against this team.

"We got back in control, we got to the right end of the field, Vince Mellars came on and got the ball back from kick-off and we believed in ourselves.

"We talked about winning this week as well as playing well, which is good.

"At times when we went ahead or got level, we were playing like we were behind all the time. We needed to be a bit more composed at times but we certainly got to the right end of the field enough times to win. We defended a lot better this week too."

Catalans Dragons coach Kevin Walters claimed his side are in for a hefty defeat in their Carnegie Challenge Cup semi-final if they put on as woeful a display as they did on Saturday night.

Walters will demand much more on cup duty against Warrington on August 8.

"I’m a bit over the semi-final to be honest," he said. "Everyone keeps talking about it. We might as well not even show up if we’re going to play like that - it’ll be 70 or 80 (points)."

Walters felt embarrassed with his team’s performance, which saw them surrender a two-point lead with six minutes to go after Crusaders successfully recovered a short kick-off which led to Lupton’s winning score.

"I’m really disappointed for the Catalans fans who showed up here," he added. "If we had Crusaders’ will or desire then we would have won that game. They out-enthused us and the game meant more to them than it did to us and that was very disappointing."

The Dragons lost Greenshields at half-time to a hamstring injury but Walters said that that was not a deciding factor.

"It’s not a major injury for him," said Walters. "He felt a bit of a twinge in his hamstring but that didn’t really affect the outcome of the match.

"I thought that even in the first half, we bombed a lot of opportunities that were schoolboy errors. Considering that they’re professional athletes it’s not amusing, it’s embarrassing.

"Their application to their work and attention to detail was dreadful."